Keep on working over Christmas

It is absolutely vital you have enough time throughout the year to re-charge your batteries. Those in highly stressed jobs – I think for example of the health professional I work with – absolutely MUST take time between shifts to recuperate or the results to their health can be catastrophic. And even outside of those jobs, most of us find work to have its stresses for which the only real long term survival strategy is to have enough time away from it to recover. And this is why the received wisdom on wellbeing at work is to take breaks, have time to breathe during the day, don’t work in the evenings or weekends and when on holiday, completely switch off. And I think there is a lot to be commended in this advice. The research seems to show this sort of thing is a good idea and there are many academics doing really useful work in this area. So I surely can’t be serious to suggest you don’t actually take time away from work over Christmas?

Well, I kind of am. And here’s why:

Daley Thompson was undefeated in the Decathlon for nearly ten years. He was known for his somewhat anti-establishment personality, great sense of humour and intense competitiveness. He said that early in his career he noticed that none of his competitors trained on Christmas Day and some took several days off. Elite sport is about tiny margins so he decided he would take no days off whatever in the year which would give him a small marginal gain. And so if you continue to do some work over Christmas and you are in an organisation that closes for several days at Christmas, you can perhaps gain some advantage.

But there is also perhaps a better reason; practically nobody else in Western organisations is working over that period so no new stuff will come in. Of course if you work with people outside the West, things might be different. But in Europe, the USA, Australia, New Zealand amongst others there is a tradition of taking time off at the end of December. This can give you time to catch up, perhaps clear your inbox or maybe take time to read. Perhaps time to work through your to do list and do things you have been meaning to do. Or (as important) delete things you can now admit are not going to happen.

For many of us (and this is true for all holidays) there is a worry that you will have a massive stack of work to do when you return from holiday. So if you keep chipping away, you will be ready to ease back into work with less stress. The risk with keeping on top of emails is that something could come up that really annoys you that can spoil your time off. But the risk is quite low at Christmas because there should be few new emails arriving.

And…

Many of the researchers who recommend taking time out don’t follow their own advice and work incredibly long hours. And why might that be? Well I think it’s because they don’t regard their research as being work. It is of course. But if you enjoy something, you think it’s important and that you are making a contribution to the world, you won’t necessarily want to switch off from it completely. And so if that is you, then my suggestion is to embrace it with a sense of balance.

However, if your work stresses you out, or doesn’t bring you satisfaction, or you don’t think is a useful contribution to the world, then by all means switch everything off as often and for as long as you can. And maybe, another blog will have suggestions about what you do in those circumstances.

Merry Christmas!

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Published by patricktissington

Professor specialising in workplace skills at the University of Warwick. Fascinated by people and how they sometimes work well together whereas other times.... I tweet from @studenttoptips and try to generate content that students will find useful
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